the film is considerably less involved than in the former. Film historian John Soister characterizes La Plante's role as that of an ingénue, consisting primarily of reactions to "assorted assaults, visions, and set-ups." The film marked La Plante's first talking picture. British actor Montagu Love was cast opposite La Plante, receiving second-billing. Soister notes that Love was "cast against type" for his role, that of "no-nonsense" theater owner Arthur McHugh. Margaret Livingston, an actress who had also begun her career as a teenager, was cast in the role of actress Evalynda Hendon; her performance in the film helped earn her a role in Universal's The Charlatan, released later that year. In the role of Richard Quayle, Leni cast actor John Boles, who subsequently had a minor part in Frankenstein (1931). Bert Roach was cast as Mike Brody, the producer who re-stages the play in the film. Barbara, an elderly character actress who starred in the original play in which Woodford was murdered, is portrayed by Dutch actress Carrie Daumery. This was Daumery's only film credit from the silent era, and her role is likened by Soister and others to that of Flora Finch in The Cat and the Canary, but stripped of any comedic tone. Filming Principal photography began in August 1928. The theater set used in the film had originally been used in the 1925 The Phantom of the Opera starring Lon Chaney, and was located in Universal City, California. Release According to the American Film Institute, The Last Warning had its theatrical debut in New York City on January 6, 1929. However, special advance screenings occurred on Christmas Day 1928 in several U.S. cities, including Chillicothe, Missouri, and Manhattan, Kansas. The film was marketed as a successor to producer Leni's previous film The Cat and the Canary, attributed to producer Laemmle's "discriminating supervision." It is often considered one of the last silent films produced by Universal Studios, but it was also released in a "part-talkie" Movietone version with a brief minute or two of synch-sound footage added, as well as screams, cries, and other sound effects. These scenes have since been lost. Few prints of the film exist in the United States: One is owned by the George Eastman House Motion Picture Collection in Rochester, New York, which was originally owned by the Cinémathèque Française, and is slightly edited and entirely silent with French intertitles. Critical response Contemporaneous